Audi again on top as Santiago Urrutia goes fastest in Barcelona FP2

Santiago Urrutia continued Audi’s Friday domination at the penultimate round of the TCR Europe series at Barcelona by setting the fastest time in the second practice session.

The WRT driver took his RS 3 LMS to a time of 1:53.960, the only one to get under the 1:54s benchmark in the 30-minute session.

Urrutia finished up over four-tenths of a second quicker than points leader Josh Files in the Target Competition Hyundai i30 N TCR, with Files’ team-mate Dominik Baumann third.

Having set the second quickest time in the first session, Urrutia was the first driver to post a representative time early on, with a 1:55.052.

This was soon beaten by the Target Competition Hyundai of Andreas Bäckman and then Files with a 1:54.377.

But Urrutia proved the man to beat again by setting his quickest time of the day with 10 minutes remaining, and with a healthy margin in hand.

The nearest non Hyundai challenger to Urrutia’s dominance was the Peugeot 308TCR of Julien Briché, who set the fifth fastest time, some six-tenths of Files’ best.

Behind Bäckman came the first of the Honda Civic Type R FK8 TCRs of Dan Lloyd, who was seventh for Brutal Fish Racing.

The third Target Competition Hyundai of Mat’o Homola was eighth fastest, one place ahead of the Team Clairet Sport Peugeot of Jimmy Clairet.

Opening practice pace-setter Gilles Magnus endured something of a quiet session in his Comtoyou Racing Audi RS 3 LMS, posting the tenth quickest time.

The Belgian, who headed Urrutia earlier on, had languished as far down as 18th, but launched a late surge to just make it into the top ten at the death.

Just outside the top ten came the final Target Competition i30 N TCR of Jessica Bäckman in 11th, while Renault Clio UK regular Jack Young was an impressive 12th fastest in his first outing in the Vukovic Renault Megane TCR.